Ponvert added that the arrest sends an important message about childhood
sexual abuse. “My client and I hope that the $20 million judgment in
the civil case and now this arrest will send a loud message to other
victims that they can safely come forward and will be believed and a
louder message to would-be child molestors that, if they touch a child,
they will be pursued relentlessly, will be publicly humiliated, will
lose everything they have, and will spend many years with their fellow
rapists behind bars in a maximum-security prison,” he said.

(REPRINTED GRAPHIC ACTS AS REPORTED IN THE MEDIA...HARD TO READ, HARDER FOR ME TO POST)

Affidavit: Scar Gave Rabbi Greer Away

A one-to-three-inch scar, and the way he pulled his pants over his
shoes, helped seal Rabbi Daniel Greer’s fate with police investigating
whether he repeatedly sexually assaulted yeshiva students over a period
of years.

That point emerged in an arrest warrant affidavit made
public Thursday, one day after the prominent Edgewood rabbi turned
himself in to police on charges of second-degree sexual assault and
risk of injury to a minor. Greer, who is 77 years old, is free on a
$100,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court Aug. 11, after his
lawyer, prominent criminal defense attorney Willie Dow, returns from
vacation. In an interview, Dow denied the charges on Greer’s behalf.
Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Stacey Miranda is handling the case
for the government.

The arrest warrant affidavit, written by lead
police investigator Detective Kristine Cuddy, details the information
she gathered from an alleged victim of the rabbi as well as information
she relied on to buttress the allegations.

Her investigation
stemmed from a complaint police received last August from a former
student at the yeshiva Greer started in the Edgewood neighborhood.
Though the affidavit doesn’t name the student, a lawyer for the victim,
Eliyahu Mirlis, confirmed that he is the one who came forward to police.

Mirlis also brought a federal civil lawsuit against Greer that wrapped
up in May, when Greer lost a $20 million verdict in federal court.
That trial, which was decided on a lower standard of a “preponderance
of the evidence,” or who’s case was more likely, included testimony
about years-long abuse of at least one other victim at the school. Greer
invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to decline
responding to the allegations. (The rabbi is seeking a new trial.)

According
to the arrest warrant affidavit, during an interview at police
headquarters on Aug. 25, 2016, Detectives Cuddy and Shayna Kendall
sought to shore up details about Mirlis’s alleged abuse, which he said
had occurred in the “early to middle 2000s.” The detectives questioned
him about dates and locations, as well as a description of Greer’s naked
body.

Mirlis, now 29 years old, told the officers that the rabbi
had orange public hair (that might have changed with age), a circumcised
penis, no tattoos, a hairy back and chest, a mole on his upper back and
a scar between one and four inches long between his thigh and his
testicle. Mirlis said the scar could be seen only if Greer was naked. He
couldn’t remember which leg the scar was on.

Mirlis also stated
that, at the time he was allegedly assaulted, Greer had an unusual habit
of putting his shoes on before his pants when redressing — a fact that
wasn’t disclosed in the civil trial.

To verify, Cuddy applied for a
warrant last month to view Greer’s naked body. Judge Brian Fischer
approved it. On June 20, Sgt. David Zannelli and three detectives met
Greer at his lawyer’s offices on Orange Street. In a private room, two
detectives videotaped and photographed Greer with and without his
clothes on. (Cuddy wasn’t present.) Greer’s lawyer said the rabbi would
give no statement to the cops.

After reviewing the images on a
DVD, Cuddy wrote, they “corroborated” all of Mirlis’s statements. In the
affidavit, she wrote, “The images clearly showed that Greer did in fact
have a lot of pubic hair, orange in color, an extremely hairy chest,
white in color, an extremely hairy back, black in color. Also, small
mole on the upper right side of his back, a small circumcised penis and a
scar on Greer’s body one to three inches in length between the right
thigh and right testicle.”

At the federal civil trial, defense
attorneys sought to establish that most students at the tight-knit
yeshiva would have known Greer had a hernia surgery and thus a scar.

The
police video also supported, but did not confirm, Mirlis’s description
of how Greer dressed, according to Cuddy’s affidavit. “I also noted
while watching the video of Greer undressing that he removed his pants
while wearing his shoes,” Cuddy wrote. “The victim had stated that Greer
would put his pants on while wearing his shoes, although today he did
the opposite, it is an odd behavior.”

Cuddy, a 14-year veteran of
the force in the Special Victims Unit, noted that law enforcement’s case
was also supported by the rest of Mirlis’s detailed, sometimes lurid,
testimony and a videotaped deposition from the civil trial by a separate
former student who became the yeshiva’s principal of his own sexual
relations with Greer. That student, Aviad Hack, spoke of years worth of
alleged sexual abuse. (Click here for a story detailing that.)

Criminal Allegations

A GREER STUDENT IN YESHIVA WINDOW - KNOWN AS "THE FINGER"

In his interview with law enforcement last year, Mirlis described his
alleged abuse in graphic detail that wasn’t brought up at trial. Here’s
how the arrest warrant affidavit reports the allegations:Mirlis
said that the abuse began during his sophomore year, when he was about
14 years old. Greer told him to meet on the first floor of 777 Elm St.,
one of the dormitories next to the yeshiva. The rabbi allegedly served
him alcohol (usually a bloody mary, single-malt scotch or wine) and sat
him down on a couch, engaged in an emotional conversation, then leaned
in and kissed him on the mouth. Mirlis “freaked out,” he told the cops,
and left.

A week or two later, Greer told him to come to the same
spot. Again, he served him alcohol and sat him down on the couch, Mirlis
claimed. Greer then allegedly told Mirlis to stand, undid the boy’s
belt, pulled his pants down to his ankles and had oral sex.

Mirlis
told the detectives that the sexual assaults became a “regular thing”
after that. On a weekly basis, usually on a weekday evening or a Sunday
afternoon, he was sexually assaulted at the dorms and at rental
properties on Norton Street, Edgewood Avenue, Maple Street and Park
Street, Mirlis stated in the interview.

Mirlis said his grades
suffered when he refused to meet with Greer. (At the civil trial, the
defense attorneys pointed out that his final report cards had all A’s
and B’s.) Mirlis also said that Greer, who then acted as the school’s
dean, would yell at him in the yeshiva’s hallways and threaten him with
expulsion. From the teenager’s perspective, the sexual abuse seemed like
“a game” to the rabbi.

Mirlis was sexually assaulted so often
that the encounters started to blur together, he added. Mirlis
remembered, once, Greer lay naked on top of him in the “69” position; on
another occasion, he added, Greer would “get in the doggy position,”
hand the teen KY Jelly lube and be penetrated anally. Mirlis told Greer
he “didn’t like it” when he was penetrated, but that also allegedly
continued anyway.

They didn’t wear condoms, Mirlis told cops. He
maintained that, on various encounters, he ejaculated inside Greer’s
anus and mouth and on his stomach; after oral sex, Greer would ejaculate
on his chest.
The final sexual assault was in June 2005, shortly after he graduated from the Yeshiva, Mirlis told the detectives.

Rabbi Posts Bond

Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford signed off on Greer’s arrest warrant on Tuesday.Greer
showed up at 1 Union Ave. at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday along with attorney
David Grudberg (who was accompanying him while Dow, his lawyer in the
criminal case, is on vacation) to surrender. Bond was set at $100,000.
Greer posted it shortly after noon. As he left the police station, he
declined comment to a reporter.

Greer denies the charges against
him and plans to enter a plea of not guilty, Willie Dow, of Jacobs &
Dow, said by phone. “Rabbi Greer has a long history of positive
contributions to the New Haven community,” Dow said. “These charges are
unfounded. He looks forward to addressing this case in court.”

Mirlis’s
attorney, Antonio Ponvert III of Bridgeport’s Koskoff, Koskoff &
Bieder, confirmed Wednesday that Mirlis also made the complaint to the
New Haven police on which the investigation was based.

“Mirlis is
relieved and gratified that the New Haven Police pursued this matter,
and that Greer has been arrested and will now face criminal penalties
for his sexual abuse of children. One of my client’s goals in bringing
Greer’s abuse to light was to get this pedophile off the streets and far
away from other people’s children,” Ponvert wrote in an email
Wednesday. “Sexual predators — especially this so-called ‘rabbi’ and
others who twist spiritual beliefs for their own sick pleasure — deserve
to suffer all available civil and criminal penalties.”

Ponvert
added that the arrest sends an important message about childhood sexual
abuse. “My client and I hope that the $20 million judgment in the civil
case and now this arrest will send a loud message to other victims that
they can safely come forward and will be believed and a louder message
to would-be child molestors that, if they touch a child, they will be
pursued relentlessly, will be publicly humiliated, will lose everything
they have, and will spend many years with their fellow rapists behind
bars in a maximum-security prison,” he said.

In seeking to begin
collecting on the $20 million federal civil verdict, Ponvert has
obtained judgment liens on the yeshiva’s Elm Street building, property
it owns in Bethany, and Greer’s personal residence in the Edgewood
neighborhood.

The Greer case has destroyed a close-knit religious
community that centered around the yeshiva. However, even though the
school lost all its students, it has been reconstituted, and attracted new attention from state authorities.
The Yeshiva of New Haven remains open, under new management, despite
lacking the proper licenses to operate a boarding school. The Department
of Children and Families and the State Department of Education are
still scheduling a meeting with the school administration, a DCF
spokesperson said last week.

Beginning in the 1980s, Rabbi Greer
oversaw the revival of the neighborhood around his yeshiva at the corner
of Norton and Elm streets, renovating neglected historic homes.

Over
the years, Greer has also crusaded against gay rights in Connecticut,
at times played an active role in politics and government, and advocated
for keeping nuisance businesses out of the Whalley Avenue commercial
corridor. He and his family earned national attention for exposing johns
who patronized street prostitutes in the neighborhood, for filing suit
against Yale University over a requirement that students live in coed
dorms, and then in 2007 for launching an armed neighborhood “defense” patrol and then calling in the Guardian Angels for assistance to combat crime. In the 1970s, Greer also led a successful campaign to force the United States to pressure the Soviet Union into allowing Jewish “refuseniks” to emigrate here and start new, freer lives.

Tendler-Like Teacher Says He Only Pursued Students After School!

World's Greatest Criminal Mugshots!

If Your Child Gets Raped - Go First To Your Rabbi - די באַסטערדז!

For My Israeli Readers! צפייה ביקורתית של יהדות אורתודוקסית

CLICK!

Mazel Tov - Rabbi Hershel Schachter!

CLICK ABOVE PHOTO! Rabbi Moshe Feinstein states the very marriage of a gentile woman to a non observant Jew, is equivalent to an open declaration that she will not observe the precepts. This is so, because it is highly unlikely that the gentile member of such a union, will be more committed to Judaism than her remiss Jewish husband (certainly when they are living together prior to their marriage). Unlike mental or tacit negations, explains Rav Feinstein, open declarations do invalidate conversions. When such cases appear before a rabbinical court, its members actually become witnesses to an acceptance declaration that is not sincere. Therefore, it is no longer a tacit insincerity, but rather an obvious one. As such, they are forbidden to sanction the conversion. Regardless of what this Jewish court may declare, the conversion is invalid and the person is not deemed a member of the Jewish nation. In Iggros Moshe, Letters of Moshe (Yoreh De’ah, no. 157), he writes that “According to the Law, it is certain that one who converts for the sake of marriage, does not intend to keep the commandments, and is not a proselyte at all.”

The Tendler Disease in the News - Again!

CLICK!

Child Molestor is Castrated in Plea Deal!

CLICK ON CUT 'EM OFF TENDLER!

We Are In A Time When The Sheep May No Longer Trust The Shepherds!

CLICK!

Tendler Country - Ex - High School Principal Gets 8 Years For Molesting Students!

New Square Appoints Vaad To Deal With Sexual Abuse!

Lakewood Kollel Opens In Senegal!

Scandals Tests Trust in Leadership!

Rabbi Matt Salomon Offers The Pope His Help!

CLICK ON PHOTO!

Oy! Does He Have A Headache!

CLICK ON YOSEL!

Child Abuse - Chipping Away At The Wall Of Silence!

CLICK ON BRIDGE - FOR SALE AT THE AGUDATH ISRAEL!

Rav Yosef Blau Shlita

***CLICK ON PHOTO!*** "Batei Din in our times are not effective in dealing with criminal behavior. Lacking the investigative arm of the police and having restrictive standards of testimony they can not establish guilt. When the culprit is charismatic, he can often get protégés who feel indebted to him to lie to the Beis Din. It takes years before those who have been abused as youngsters to openly face their abuser."

Kolko's Office Sign - Auctioned On eBay!

I'm a bit concerned about Ehud - he can't seem to keep his hands off of me!

Ehud asked me to pardon him!

Looks like George has been hangin' with Bill Clinton!

I look into your eyes --- and I see a rotten crook!

Did you hear the one about the rabbi & the priest? Rabbi Kolko penetrated the priest (oh father)...